Ridenbaugh Press/Northwest

This post may be rendered useful speculation tomorrow or next week, and odds are it will be. Can’t help posting it, though, just because it seems to shine some light on a political dog that didn’t bark in the night-time.

That would be C.L. “Butch” Otter, the governor of Idaho who is widely expected to run for a second term. He has nowhere said he won’t, has indicated he will, and has six filing days left to do it. But when asked about his campaign, he has sounded reluctant to the point of diffidence. Yeah, odds are he will.

But it’s quite a contrast with the last cycle for the office, when Otter, just re-elected in 2004 to the U.S. House, made clear he wanted to run for governor. Hardly had his re-election to federal office been certified than he was on the run, the happy warrior doing everything he could to lock down at least the Republican nomination for governor. Then-Lieutenant Governor Jim Risch, who also wanted the job, was simply out-maneuvered, and in November 2005, after strongly suggested he was in the race, dropped out. It was the logical move: Otter had moved very aggressively to sew it up.

Compare that to this cycle: What looks very like an oh-I’ll-get-around-to-it sort of approach, almost an unwillingness. The contrast couldn’t be much greater.

So what if Otter – and the decision is singularly his – decided: To hell with this garbage everyone insists on putting me through? What if he decided not to file?

What a fun time we’d have. Well, some of us. Continue Reading »

Monday was a deluge, the rest of the week a trickle, in Idaho candidate filings. That’s not unusual; the pace doesn’t ordinarily pick up again until near the end, which is a week from tomorrow.

No posts on this the last couple of days because there wasn’t a lot to say – the fitful filings have been mostly as expected.

Following up on a Kevin Reichert post yesterday, though: The bulk of the legislature does seem to be running for another go-round.

Unless my count was somehow side-tracked, I’m now counting 82 current legislators having filed for another run at the legislature. That includes Democrat Anne Pasley-Stuart in District 19, currently a House member running for the Senate seat, but not Senator Nicole LeFavour, who plans to swap offices with Pasley-Stuart, but hasn’t yet filed. o you can bump that up to 83.

Since there are just 105 legislators, and since six more filing days (out of a total of 10) remain, that gives good odds the next legislature will, as Reichert suggested, closely resemble this one.

There is also this:

Total number of legislative seats (out of 105 total) for which Democratic candidates (including incumbents) have filed so far: 20. Seats for which Republicans (including incumbents) have filed: 79.

Some of them, anyway. This is the first official day of campaign ‘10 in Idaho, because it’s the first day candidates were allowed formally to file for office. (In Oregon, they’ve been doing it since last fall.) A good many of them did that on Day 1, but the deadline for filing isn’t until a week from Friday.

The names listed so far on the sheet released twice-daily by the secretary of state offers no big surprises so far. The biggest Day 1 splash was the filing by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keith Allred, and three others – Republican Rex Rammell, independent Jana Kemp and Libertarian Ted Dunlap – also filed for the office. But the incumbent, Republican C.L. “Butch” Otter, who generally is expected to run, hasn’t shown yet.

No U.S Senate candidates yet (Republican incumbent Mike Crapo hasn’t turned in yet), but both U.S. House incumbents have filed. And while no one is in yet for lieutenant governor or superintendent of public instruction (where both incumbent are expected to run), the incumbent secretary of state, controller, attorney general and treasurer all filed their papers, and all were unopposed (as of the end of day 1).

Nothing yet by way of judicial challenges, though a couple have been rumored.

If my count is right, 49 of the current 105 legislators have filed for re-election – close to half on day one, a strong showing. But (will this hold up?) only a few challenges, primary or general, materializing as yet.

More as it comes.

As energy providers look around for new sources of electric power – wind gaining special popularity in the Northwest – here’s one that could be highly useful and available all over the region:

Tapping into methane gas found at landfills, and converting it into energy.

The Kootenai Electric Cooperative, based at Hayden, is planning to use methane gas emerging from the Fighting Creek landfill. The Spokesman Review quotes its marketing manager as saying, “We have a unique situation here, which makes this a wonderful project. We have fuel in close proximity to the power lines. Basically what we’re doing is putting a generator in between the two. So it’s very economical. The power will go right to the power lines.”

That may be a better-than-average situation, but it probably could be managed at many other locations as well. There’s a neat efficiency to the concept, and useful environmental cleanup alongside.

Money decisions are where your priorities hit the road. Talk is cheap; when you decide how money is allocated, you’re putting something closer to your true self out there.

That seems to be hitting home with Idaho state Senator Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, who is a member of the legislative budget committee but not part of its operative majority. Watching the committee slice away at the state Department of Health & Welfare, she responded with a blog post unusual (among legislative blog posts) for its pungency.

Unlike with education budgets yesterday, none of the affected parties were brought in. No stakeholder meetings were held with the disability community, with people with chronic illnesses or with the hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses to see if this would work out. No, we have handed down a fly by the seat of your pants budget full of intent language acknowledging that it may fall apart by January. And if it does it seems that’s ok because January is after the elections.

Fred Wood, maker of the motion, leader of the heartless, had the lack of sensitivity to mention going home as he wove his committee debate this morning there under the grand columns and the domed, cream colored ceiling. This is about going home. Passing this fly by the seat of our pants budget is about going home, not about us as law makers governing or leading or taking seriously our duty to do more than just make the numbers pan out.

Now we will watch the waiting lists grow and we know already that slowly the process is bogging down. Already the Department of Health & Welfare (whose employees are often some of the lowest paid in the state) already they close down half a day every other Friday without pay. Now they will close a whole days, close whole field offices so people if they have a car must drive and wait and perhaps still not get served, still not make it to the front of the line for help for a child, for food or something to get them through now that unemployment has run out.

Representative Wood, the scowling man with the mustache and thick glasses glaring over his microphone said we HAD to cut this budget as we did. He knows as well as I do that a single change in the grocery tax credit would fix this… He knows well that we could vote for one year not to give $40 grocery tax credits to Idahoans earning more than $20,000 a year ($40,000 for married couples.) The whole committee knows that this one simple $35 million change could prevent us from losing $120 million in federal funds and could have completely prevented us from making all these cuts in the Health Assistance budget this year.

There are other options too, such as increasing the number of tax auditors. (The conservative hosts of the Monday Twin Falls radio program where I guest during sessions wonder why that hasn’t been done, and it’s a good question.) Or – God forbid – actually find a way to raise revenue.

But that’s not the priority.

Mike Gwartney (left) and Butch Otter at a check presentation/Office of the Governor

The hottest person of controversy in Idaho right now may be not the governor, C.L. “Butch” Otter, but the director of the Department of Administration, Mike Gwartney. Though many of Gwartney’s critics evidently are missing the point: If Gwartney is rightfully controversial, then that controversy has to land at Otter’s doorstep.

As director of administration, even if only for a dollar a year (as the reports say), Gwartney reports directly to Otter. Otter can overrule anything he does. He serves at “the pleasure of” the governor – the governor can fire him at any time, for any reason or none. Whatever he does, good or bad, isn’t his own alone; the buck stops with Otter.

Witness here part of the problem that arises with hiring friends, even friends with good reputations. When your scribe started reporting on the Idaho Legislature in the mid-70s, Gwartney was among the members of the House (Otter had just left that chamber), and he was among the more highly-regarded of legislators. He often showed up in reporter lists of the better legislators.

He’s been away from all that for quite a while, though. A speculation: In his years in business at Boise Boise Cascade and the Farmers and Merchants Bank, and no doubt through lots of talks with the libertarian Otter, he may have come to think that government could work better if it were run much as those businesses were. But government doesn’t run like business, and that’s a good thing. They’re different animals. They function in different ways.

So you get quotes like one from Senator Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, as budget committee chair no stranger to dealing with many sorts of state executives, complaining about “the imperialistic attitude Mr. Gwartney brings to a lot of the projects he does.”

You get a whole string of battles on a wide range of fronts, poor legislative relations and at least one major lawsuit, all in areas where Gwartney has been directly involved. And a Gwartney now seemingly holed up in his office while a clamor for his resignation has been starting to kick in outside.

That falls to Otter, Gwartney’s boss as well as his friend, as the governor launches his bid for re-election. Damage to Otter is being done; however much some Republican office holders may want to point a finger at Gwartney, it has to come back around to Otter. What we will see soon is what Otter and Gwartney decide to do about it within the confines of friendship, and of politics. And of governing a state.

Not to harp too much on the Pocatello Tea Party, but this one was not to be missed.

The headline was “Ten Reasons Why We Need a State Militia Now.”

Here are the ten:

Attacks by international “terrorists”

Invasion by illegal immigrants

Infusions of illicit drugs

Depredations of criminal enterprises organized and operated on a global scale

Rampant domestic “gangster government” at the National, State and Local levels

The dragooning of America as a “global policeman” in the service of special-interest groups, both foreign and domestic

Schemes aimed at overthrowing the Declaration of Independence

Cultural subversion, corruption, and dissolution

The inherent instability and corruption of America’s monetary and banking systems

A staggering burden of governmental financial liabilities

Assuming you could figure out just how a state militia would solve all those problems, there’s just one left:

What do you do with the current Idaho militia – that is, the Idaho National Guard?

There are plenty of people in this country who are here illegally, and one effective way to get a handle on that would be to block their employment. So how far should legislators go in that direction?

In Idaho, there’s House Bill 497, backed by Representatives Phil Hart and Raul Labrador, and its statement of purpose says this: “If enacted, this legislation will allow for Idaho employers to have their state, county or city licenses suspended for knowingly employing illegal aliens. Professional licenses are excluded from the legislation. For a first offense, a license will be suspended until the employer signs an affidavit stating that the employer will not hire an unauthorized alien in the future. If the employer signs this affidavit within three (3) days of the court ruling, no suspension of the license will take place. For a second offense in a three (3) year period, the license will be suspended for up to ten (10) days. For a third offense in a three (3) year period, the license will be suspended for up to one year.”

The bill died in the House State Affairs Committee, after a motion by Representative Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs. The was followed by a blog post by the Pocatello Tea Party headlined, “Tar & Feather Rep. Andrus.” (It was a predecessor to the post, “Tar & Feather Rep. Elaine Smith; her sin had to do with the law on midwives.)

So what does Andrus have to say for himself? Well, this:

HB497 would require an employer’s license to be revoked for up to one year. I do not know the economic impact to the construction, motel and restaurant industries, but I have some experience and knowledge in agriculture. I have employed one or more foreign born workers, continuously, for more than 25 years. I have never illegally hired a worker. It is wrong. I do not condone hiring illegals – period.

Consider the consequence of an employer’s license being revoked for one year. Most agricultural employers operate under a partnership, corporation or LLC license. If the license is suddenly revoked, do the county commissioners or sheriff now come in and take over the farm or ranch and the owner (or former owner) take his family and go to a homeless shelter for sustenance? If a dairyman unexpectedly loses his license and is shut down, who now milks the cows (which may number more than a thousand on some dairies) – the humane society, to relieve pressure and pain in the udder and keep them from getting mastitis? These are realistic scenarios and no answer was given when I asked the question in the committee hearing.

It’s called thinking through the effects.

Time to prepare for breaking out the D-word?

The northwest’s snowpack seemed to be in pretty good shape two to three months ago. Less so now, and in places it could get pretty parched.

Only one spot in the Northwest has higher than normal accumulated precipitation: The Olympic peninsula (at about 151%). Other than that, it’s a question how relatively dry are you?

Th driest river basins (compared with the percentage four months ago in parentheses):

Washington: Spokane 65% (was 94%), Lower Snake 67% (was 103%), Upper Yakima (was 74%)

Oregon: Klamath 71% (was 74%), Hood/Sandy/Lower Deschutes 72% (was 101%), Rogue/Umpqua 74% (was 85%), Willamette 74% (was 103%).

Idaho: Henry’s Fork/Teton 60% (was 88%), Snake River above Palisades 61% (was ), Clearwater 62% (was ), Spokane 65% (was 94%), Salmon 68% (was 89%), Willow/Blackfoot/Portneuf 69% (was 73%).

Probably doesn’t feel that way right now to the Boise advocates – Mayor David Bieter among them – of a downtown streetcar, but in denying federal money to the city for that project, the feds may have done those advocates a big favor.

This marks the opportunity, which maybe some of them have been quietly hoping for, to back off.

No doubt Bieter was very serious about creating such a project; it would much change the look and feel of Boise’s downtown, and some positives likely would have come of it. But the questions about how and why it would work, and whether it was the right priority for the area, were almost overwhelming. We’ve been struck by the number of Boiseans who have been long-time passionate supporters of mass transit who could not see their way to supporting this one, even if most of the money for it was federal. Polling suggests that Boiseans overall are highly skeptical.

Streetcars are not necessarily a bad idea. Portland has a good streetcar system (linked to its light rail and bus operations), and picked up $23.2 million today for its program. Tucson and Dallas got money for streetcars too.

And for now at least, Boise city officials indicated they won’t be giving up.

But they may be well advised to see today’s decision as an opportunity to take a pause, step back, and rethink.

Candidates for Congress stress any and all connections they have in the home district and shuffle off to the side their links to money and connections in D.C. But those money and connections often (not going to say always) play a big role in just how well a campaign comes together, and whether it ultimately wins, and what directions it takes (at campaign level, or in office).

So a blog post by former Boise City Council candidate Lucas Baumbach is worth note for some of the ties that might, or might not, come into play in the Idaho 1st district race.

Baumbach has had some issues with the 1st District Republican front runner, Vaughn Ward; his primary opponent is legislator Raul Labrador, and both are seeking to unseat incumbent Democrat Walt Minnick. In a look through Ward’s campaign finance reports, he frequent crossed the name of Erin Casey, a Washington-based fundraiser.

To pause here: Consulting fundraisers have in the last couple of decades become a big part of the scene for both political parties, and a lot candidates use them. (The distortions in politics their trade has led to, for both parties, are serious, but the subject of some other post.) Ward’s federal finance reports show his campaign paying her $17,570 last year (for fundraising), in monthly payments starting in late spring. Baumbach writes that “It’s clear that without her his campaign would be as broke as it was last April.” Maybe: Looking at the campaign from the outside, we’d suggest that’s impossible to know for sure.

But there are a couple of other things we do know.

Casey started her fundraising and events company last spring – just about the same time Ward hired her. A great leap of faith in a newcomer, perhaps. But her most recent job before that may also have been relevant: Before starting her company, she was director of special projects for the National Republican Senate Committee, and before that was field finance director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, and before that was the NRCC director of finance events.

This falls into focus when you wonder about Ward’s early de-facto (if unofficial) endorsement by a number of key national leadership Republicans. The architecture of connections and funding were being built in from an early stage. Very early.

To pick up again with Erin Casey: A job or two before the NRCC, she was working on campaigns for former U.S. Representative Chris Chocola, R-Indiana. He is of interest here for this reason: In April of last year, he was named president of the Club for Growth, which was the key national group that helped power former Representative Bill Sali through his primary and general elections in 2006, when he won (but did not provide support in 2008, when he lost). The Washington Times has reported Chocola “has become the ‘go-to guy’ for endorsements and money for a growing clientele of fiscally conservative Republican candidates for Congress.” There’s been no visible link of Club for Growth to Ward’s campaign so far, but you wonder if it may be coming (some positive notes from them about Minnick notwithstanding).

Sali, we might note again, has not publicly ruled out a race again in the 1st, but has made no active moves toward it, either.

All of this is only part of the story. But a relevant part.

QUOTE OF NOTE In rummaging through the web record, we ran across an interview Casey gave with National Journal magazine, and this Q&A: “If you could only watch one TV news show, what would it be? None – I prefer to read news clips and stories online than watch the news shows. All the TV shows seems to slant one way or the other.” Bravo. Take her counsel: With uncommon exceptions, most news on the tube isn’t worth watching.

The Idaho House this morning passed 52-18 House Bill 391, which isstructured essentially as a protest to whatever the federal government might do by way of health care policy. (Several of the supporting legislators acknowledged, accurately enough, that they don’t yet know what that might be.)

The bill “codifies as state policy that every person in the state of Idaho is and shall continue to be free from government compulsion in the selection of health insurance options, and that such liberty is protected by the Constitutions of the United States and the State of Idaho. The bill removes the authority of any state official or employee from enforcing any penalty which violates the policy. It also tasks the office of the Attorney General with seeking injunctive or other appropriate relief , or defending the state of Idaho and its officials and employees against laws, enacted by any government, which violate the policy.” It’s highly unlikely to survive a court challenge.

Two points of discussion by its advocates during debate, though, are worth a quick highlight.

Bill supporter Representative Lenore Hardy Barrett, R-Challis, said the issue was simple: This bill was supportive of the constitution, and “Either you believe in the constitution of the United States or you don’t,” and either you take your oath of office seriously, or not. A Democratic representative objected: The clear implication was that anyone who voted against the bill was trashing both the constitution and their oath of office. House Speaker Lawerence Denney, a conservative by any definition who voted for the bill, agreed that Barrett’s characterization amounted to hashing the character and motivations of the opposition (impugning the motives of another legislator in debate is counter to House rules), and asked her to withdraw her statement. She wouldn’t – she made completely evident that trashing the opposition and its motivations was entirely her point.

There’s a world of commentary in that.

The other point of interest came from Representative Raul Labrador, R-Eagle, who took a distinctly different tack. We need health care reform, he said, just not on the federal level: “We need to have state reform.”

A question, then: In Idaho, where is it? And what does Labrador propose the state do to insure the uninsured, keep the sick and previously-ill insured, and cut costs of both insurance and health care? What has any sitting Idaho Republican legislator done along those lines?

ADDED THOUGHT This morning, at the same time the Idaho House was debating and then passing a measure blocking federal health care reform, the Oregon House was debating and then passing, unanimously, House Bill 3631:

“The House today unanimously voted in favor of a bill brought forward by Representative Suzanne VanOrman (D-Hood River/Sandy) that prohibits insurers from discriminating against victims of sexual violence by treating that victimization, or physical or mental injuries sustained as a result of that victimization, as a preexisting condition that would exclude or limit coverage.”

Would the Idaho Legislature pass that one? (No such bill has been introduced so far this session.)

The idea is to increase security around the act of ballot casting – ensuring that only actual Idahoans who are legally qualified to vote actually do so. (The political point here doubtless has to do with the unlikely prospect of votes by people in the country illegally, but it would apply to anyone who legally can’t vote.)

The plan, in the bill by Idaho state Representative Mike Moyle, R-Star, introduced today, is that when people show up at the voting place, they have to show a valid picture ID before they get their ballot. On its face, that sounds reasonable enough, provided voters get ample warning of the requirement before they travel to vote.

The catch is . . . well, there are several. What about people who vote absentee, or by mail – military personnel, or Idahoans spending time in another country? Or what about elderly people, or others, who don’t have a drivers license or other picture ID? In such cases, apparently, the prospective voters would just have to sign a form saying they are who they say they are.

Considering that there seems to be no great problem of fraudulent voting in Idaho (or in most other states, either), the whole idea comes down to blocking what might be a handful of instances. Would those really be stopped by the high hurdle of having to sign an affidavit? A fence, after all, is only as strong as its weakest links . . .

In Oregon, the campaign against two tax measures on the ballot – which passed – was centered around the idea that those taxes were “job-killing.” In Idaho, the very notion of a tax increase of any sort is way off the table, in large part because of that same assumption, that taxes imposed on people and businesses will kill private sector jobs. (There’s probably a grudging acknowledgement that public sector jobs would be saved, but that appears to be a lesser factor.)

But consider this point from the latest Idaho Reports program from this weekend, reviewing the state of the budget-setting Idaho. The matter of jobs may not be quite so simple.

The subject was the state budget and jobs, as discussed by three members of the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. Here’s Democrat Wendy Jaquet:

“What bothers me as we lay people off because we don’t have this revenue, or we think we don’t have the revenue, then we have kind of a multiplier effect. I asked the director of the Department of Health & Welfare how many private sector jobs would be lost [under current budget proposals] because most of our [services] are done by private providers. And he estimated on the worst-case scenario, which is where we’re headed, it would be about 8,000 private-sector jobs. So its like we’re creating a downward spiral, and that’s what I find really worrisome.”

Jim Campbell (left) and Buckskin Bill on the Salmon, 1980, shortly before Bill’s death/Judy Lemmon

The river guide and travel business in Central Idaho’s River of No Return-Frank Church Wilderness seems as though it has been around forever, but floating and guest ranch activity is actually fairly young as a major tourist business. It kicked into high gear in the 70s when a number of central players figured out how to make it work in a very effective way. With float permits in Hells Canyon, the Middle Fork, Main Salmon, Owyhee and Lochsa rivers, the Wild Rivers Idaho business that Jim Campbell created and developed was one of the handful of businesses that contributed to building float trips into a mainstay.

Linda Watkins, who spent time with Campbell in the backcountry in the 70s and 80s, has a recollection.

It’s hard to know where to start, or what to say about Jim Campell’s death last Thursday. He’s been a part of my life for over three decades (more than 2/3 of my life) – in some ways, more of a family member than most of my own blood relations. I think of his death as I did of my father’s: Relief that he’s finally free of the pain and frustration at growing old that he’s lived with for the last several years. Continue Reading »